The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is dedicated to improving the
health of Americans by conducting and funding biomedical research that
will help prevent, detect, treat and reduce the burdens of disease and
disability. In order to achieve these goals, it is essential to ensure
that scientific information arising from NIH-funded research is
available in a timely fashion to other scientists, health care
providers, students, teachers, and the many millions of Americans
searching the web to obtain credible health-related information.
NIH’s mission includes a long-standing commitment to share and support
public access to the results and accomplishments of the activities that
it funds.

Establishing a comprehensive, searchable electronic resource of NIH-
funded research results and providing free access to all, is perhaps
the most fundamental way to collect and disseminate this information.
The NIH must balance this need with the ability of journals and
publishers to preserve their critical role in the peer review, editing
and scientific quality control process. The economic and business
implications of any changes to the current paradigm must be considered
as the NIH weighs options to ensure public access to the results of
studies funded with public support without compromising the quality of
the information being provided. The NIH has established and intends to
maintain a dialogue with publishers, investigators, and representatives
from scientific associations and the public to ensure the success of
this initiative.

This notice is to announce and to seek public comments regarding NIH’s
plans to facilitate enhanced public access to NIH health related
research information. NIH intends to request that its grantees and
supported Principal Investigators provide the NIH with electronic
copies of all final version manuscripts upon acceptance for publication
if the research was supported in whole or in part by NIH funding. This
would include all research grants, cooperative agreements, contracts,
as well as National Research Service Award (NRSA) fellowships. We
define final manuscript as the author’s version resulting after all
modifications due to the peer review process. Submission of the final
manuscript will provide NIH supported investigators with an alternate
means by which they will meet and fulfill the requirement of the
provision of one copy of each publication in the annual or final
progress reports. Submission of the electronic versions of final
manuscripts will be monitored as part of the annual grant progress
review and close-out process.

NIH considers final manuscripts to be an important record of the
research funded by the government and will archive these manuscripts
and any appropriate supplementary information in PubMed Central (PMC),
NIH’s digital repository for biomedical research. Six months after an
NIH supported research study’s publication—or sooner if the publisher
agrees—the manuscript will be made available freely to the public
through PMC. If the publisher requests, the author’s final version of
the publication will be replaced in the PMC archive by the final
publisher’s copy with an appropriate link to the publisher’s electronic
database.

As with NIH’s DNA sequence and genetics databases, this digital archive
in PMC is expected to be fully searchable to enhance retrieval and can
be shared with other international digital repositories to maximize
archiving and to provide widespread access to this information. It is
anticipated that investigators applying for new and competing renewal
support from the NIH will utilize this resource by providing links in
their applications to their PubMed archived information. This practice
will increase the efficiency of the application and review process.

NIH trusts that the up to six month delay to public archiving in PMC
recommended by the policy will not result in unreasonable or
disproportionate charges to grantees. As with all other costs, NIH
expects its grantees to be careful stewards of Federal funds and to
carefully manage these resources. We will carefully monitor requested
budgets and other costing information and would consider options to
ensure that grantees’ budgets are not unduly affected by this policy.

Comments

The NIH encourages comments concerning its intentions to enhance public
access to NIH-funded health related research information as outlined in
this notice. Comments on short term impacts and suggestions for
mitigating these are especially welcome.
We encourage that all comments be directed to the following NIH
website: https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/public_access/add.htm.
As an alternative, comments may be submitted by email to the following
address: PublicAccess@nih.gov
Comments must be received within 60 days of publication of this notice.
NIH intends to publish an identical notice in the Federal Register. (Note added 9/24/2004: Comment period extended to November 16, 2004 per NOT-OD-04-070.)